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New report: Domestic workers endure shocking conditions

12/03/12 03:10 PMUpdated 09/10/13 12:07 PM

Since the election, the new Below the Line series on Melissa Harris-Perry has focused on poverty. This week’s edition spotlighted the domestic workers who are the fuel in our household engines. They include nannies, house-cleaners and caregivers, who are all essential to the survival of many families, but continue to endure substandard working conditions.

The head of one of the organizations responsible for the survey, National Domestic Workers Alliance director Ai-Jen Poo, said:

I think the startling story that this report tells is that the people, the workforce that we count on to take care of our families every day cannot take care of their own families on their wages and the conditions that they’re facing in the workplace.

91% of workers who encountered problems with their working conditions in the prior 12 months did not complain because they were afraid they would lose their jobs.

Before guest Natalicia Tracy became executive director of the Brazilian Immigrant Center of Boston, she worked as a nanny. She said the findings of the new report are just like what she experienced:

I was brought her to be their nanny. And I was supposed to be part of the family, learn about the culture, go to school, and very soon I found myself taking care of the entire household, taking care of the children, working 80 to 90 hours a week and I was being paid $25 per week. And I was living on a three-season porch, with no hopes, and no one to help me.

Annette Bernhardt, policy co-director of the National Employment Law Project, offered some explanation for why workplace treatment like this perpetuates itself, even in our own homes:

This industry we often say is structurally wired for exploitation and there’s two pieces to it.

One is that if you look at the legal framework for these workers they have very few protections on the job. And then we’re asking them to go into this very private, closed-off space, bargain one-on-one with an employer in a context where there is this whole emotional relationship as well.

I mean, we are basically leaving them on their own and we don’t have their backs in terms of coverage, in terms of minimum wage protections, right to organize protections, etc.

The dynamic that domestic workers face has kept them from fully being a part of labor laws and policies. This new report may serve as a national call to action that will take them out of the shadows, and give them momentum to have a more prominent voice. As the Times wrote in its editorial, “achieving basic rights shouldn’t have to depend, haphazardly, on the kindness of their employers.”